


to live where soul meets body

by mythicbeast



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: Injury Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicbeast/pseuds/mythicbeast
Summary: Rycroft Philostrate, through the years, learns to deal with the missing pieces of himself.(Set in the past, but may spoil some elements of Philo's backstory.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	to live where soul meets body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BookGirlFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookGirlFan/gifts).



Philo is seven years old (according to the birthday the monks assigned him) the first time he truly understands he’s different from the other orphans, but he won’t remember this moment clearly again for decades.

They’re meant to be practicing their letters on their slates, diligently copying the forms the Headmaster has drawn for them on the board. Philo’s distracted, squirming in his seat, teeth working at one of his thumbnails while he balances.

His back _itches_.

It’s a sensation he’s felt before, though never this bad. Normally, it just feels like a pinch and a tug on the skin under his shoulder blades. When it gets too much, his failproof tactic is to wriggle out of whatever shirt he’s wearing, wherever he is, and flee scandalously bare through the halls, much to the chagrin of the brothers and the raucous delight of the other children. Whatever trouble they get up to, at least they aren’t _Philo_ , who is almost certainly not getting any desserts through the next six months for the amount of times he’s gotten caught scaling nimbly up along stone hallways. Once, memorably, he’d even gotten up on the Martyr’s gallows in the hallway (one of the other boys had dared him to touch the noose, and Philo couldn’t back down from _that_ ). 

It’s almost like a compulsion he can’t shake: to climb and climb, unbound and free, as if he’d always been meant to watch the world from somewhere other than the ground.

Today, though, it’s just the itching. The worst part is, it’s not even in a place he can scratch. It’s almost like the itch extends beyond him, into thin air, just behind him and off to the side. Too far to reach discreetly or comfortably, at least not unless he wants a swirl of robes coming up to stand beside him.

When he sees the Headmaster distracted for a moment, lecturing another boy about whatever it is that’s drawn on his slate, Philo decides that’s his chance to strike. He twists around quickly, uncaring if it makes him look the fool, and reaches out to quickly claw his fingers to scratch at thin air.

Except it isn’t thin air this time, though, not really. It feels like the bitten-off edge of his well-gnawed thumbnail hooks on an exposed vein wired directly to his spine, and his slate clatters to the ground as he bolts to his feet with a shriek. It’s a sound that sends multiple chalk pieces scraping horrendously across slate or being dropped, followed by reproachful looks for the unnecessary distraction as they turn back to their work.

None of it -- not even the headmaster swooping officiously towards him with a frown -- is enough to stop him from fixating on the sensation of it, the shock of the hum he can still feel throbbing through his body.

_What was that?_

***

Philo gets his answer about _what_ when he’s nine years old. He’s still slightly nauseous from a mixture of the concoction the cook briskly ladled down his throat to quell his fever, or perhaps because he’s recovering from a bout of measles. Perhaps, even simpler still, nauseated is just how the news itself makes him feel. 

Half-fae. Half-breed. He lets the word roll around his head, testing the contours of it. It’s so strange to have a word for what he _is_ , and it both explains everything, and nothing at all. He pelts the headmaster with questions -- did he know them after all? Does this explain why his back always feel so strange? The headmaster raises his hands in a futile effort to stem the tide, shaking his head.

“Perhaps it may,” he allows, sidestepping the first question neatly enough for Philo not to pick up on it. As far as he knows, his parents are dead and gone or vanished, and have been that way since his birth. It’s not as if his life had or lost any benefit from the lack of their presence. He’s smart enough to understand that he’s treated differently from the other boys, like he’s something more permanent than a ward to eventually be rid of. He wonders if this is what having a family feels like. Or if that’s the lingering traces of fever.

“Philo,” the headmaster says, in his quiet, attention-calling way. That’s what gets Philo to look up at him again, to notice the somber expression on the man’s face. He’s seen him angry before, and he’s seen him severe, but he’s never seen him afraid.

“You will always have to guard yourself,” he says, leaning forward. “If anyone sees the scars on your back, you must say they were from a childhood injury. You must never allow a doctor to examine you unless you can trust them to keep your secret completely. If a doctor has to examine you, they’ll recognize you for what you are right away. That means you should be careful not to get hurt. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Philo nods, solemn as only a nine-year-old can be, but he doesn’t, not really. He won’t understand it until he’s looking back on this from years later, the future the headmaster was afraid he’d live to see.

***

Philo is fourteen, and puberty has not been kind. He’s watched boys older than himself shoot up so abruptly it feels like if he listened close enough, he could hear their bones creaking as they lengthened. To add insult to injury, Darius is already almost a full head taller than him, and they’re the same age.

His height remains stubbornly petite. Instead, it’s his phantom wings that seem to grown larger, and more sensitive, until a bump or two in the hallway is enough to have him nearly biting his tongue.

Seeking refuge from well-meaning but invasive acquaintances as well as the sweltering Burgue summer, Philo ends up in a place he’s never had a reason to come to before: the library. Over the years the Light of the Martyr foundling house has existed, a fair number of unwanted possessions have found their way to its doorsteps (including the orphans that populated it, arguably). While clothes and furniture are easy enough to repurpose or distribute, books are another story. With no apparent effort at meaningful organization, books are stored in stacks rather than shelves, a dusty, precarious, presumably Martyr-approved mess waiting to happen. The library smells like wet paper and mildew, silent as a tomb -- which also means it's relatively free of other boisterous, too-tall teens who could easily rest their chin on Philo’s head.

Wandering haphazardly through the stacks, wary of the breeze he swears he can feel on his long-lost wings, all Philo’s effort nearly goes to naught when he turns a corner and nearly runs face first into the unsmiling, hulking frame of the librarian. 

It was funnier before he knew he was half-fae himself, but the foundlings often wondered if Brother Vercipal might have some giant or ogre in his family to have shoulders so broad. It’s even less of a funny joke now, as the monk stares him up and down. Philo’s about to give it up, make his frail excuses and leave, when he realizes Brother Vercipal’s asking him a question.

“Come again?” he asks, weakly, hoping the lapse in silence has gone unnoticed.

“I asked,” Brother Vercipal intones in the patient voice only the keeper of the most underappreciated resources in an orphanage full of near-feral boys can manage, “What do you read?”

Philo doesn’t read much of anything, as it happens, which he manages to stammer out. He’s learned enough with his letters -- Headmaster Finch had seen to that -- but outside of what he reads to get by in day to day life, he can’t say he’s ever read for leisure. The complete lack of preference doesn’t seem to deter Brother Vercipal, who glances at the stacks around them and somehow manages to retrieve a dog-eared volume from the middle of one without knocking it over.

“Here,” he says, simply, holding it out to Philo. “Read this and let me know how you like it.”

Gingerly accepting the book, Philo looks down at the cover, frowning as he reads the title out loud. “‘Kingdoms of the Moon’?” 

“Read it,” Brother Vercipal repeats, retreating back to his desk. Looking around, Philo finds a chair to curl up in and crack the worn-looking book open. 

By the end of the summer, Philo’s devoured every Stiver novel in the library twice over, and he’s shot up a full three inches, the ache in his wings and growing body forgotten for the ache in his heart, for stories of people finding somewhere to belong.

***

Eighteen marks the end of Philo being a foundling, which means he can no longer remain at the Light of the Martyr. There’s no official ceremony to it, just Philo packing up his meager belongings into a bag and embracing the headmaster tightly.

“Remember,” the headmaster murmurs into his ear. “Guard yourself.”

***

Some things get better, and some things get worse. By the time he’s twenty-one, Philo’s grown into the promise of his awkward, rangy frame at last, putting on muscle and bulk more fitting a man than a boy. During the day, he works at the docks, beside fauns and sailors. At night, he’s either moved on to being deep in the cups with those same fauns and sailors -- or figuring out what new substances there are that can ease the sense of fragile wings attached to his body.

Most days, he can manage to not feel them at all. 

Others take notice of how Philo’s grown, too. Between all the ways of finding out what life has to offer beyond the quiet sanctum of the foundling home’s halls, Philo’s days becomes a blur of sound and color, or as much color as there ever can be in the Burgue’s poorer quarters. Philo learns his way around other people’s bodies, and is discovered in turn. Lovers run their fingers over the scars on his back, asking the same soft, curious questions, unaware that they’re passing through ghosts. _Where did these come from?_ Or _Do they still hurt?_

There are times Philo imagines what might happen if he answered _yes._ If he took them by the hand, searched their eyes, and told them the truth of what he really is. The imagined look on their faces is always enough to remind him of all the ways that’s a terrible idea, though, so he sets that thought aside. 

For better or ill, he finds himself drawn to the fringes of Carnival Row, but he doesn’t actually manage to bring himself to explore it. It’s not as if he has a reputation to worry about protecting, and he wants to, but something about the prospect of actually getting to know more about the fae is daunting. He thinks he might be afraid of being disappointed -- or maybe afraid he’ll like it too much to go back to living without it. He's met enough of them on the street to know well enough they don't recognize him as one of their own.

Philo’s latest paramour -- an artist who’s currently deciding whether to go by Violet or Lavender as her signature -- gains an obsession for smoking exotic spices, which ends exactly as unpleasantly as one might expect. Which means Philo finds himself out on the balcony one brisk autumn night, trying to clear the smell of hair on fire from his nostrils and lungs, when the army’s recruiters pass with a brassy fanfare and starched uniform. _FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,_ the recruiter bellows. _FIGHT FOR THE BURGUE!_

The banners they flash carry the silhouette of a Burguish soldier in uniform and a winged mockery of a fae, hands clasped in solidarity. It’s not a very good rendition, but it feels strangely familiar somehow, like he’s seen an image of it before.

“Oh.” Bare feet patter across the floor behind Philo, voice still hoarse from the shrill panicking from earlier. Violet-Lavender still smells faintly of burnt hair, but also sounds considerably more sober. “They must be desperate for bodies, if they’re recruiting here now.”

“Bodies?” Philo asks, quizzically. He’s aware of the war in the same distant sense everyone in the Burgue is, but had never really paid attention. Living with all sorts of characters tended to effectively occupy one’s energy for anything beyond his immediate circle of influence.

“That’s what they say.” Confident in the analysis of perceived reality in a way only an artist could be, she gesticulates with a hand. “The propaganda might say we’re winning, but it’s two against one out there, you know? You sign up, no guarantee you’re coming back.”

She winds around the furniture to tuck her chin against his shoulder, fingers absently stroking along the line of his back. Philo tries not to tense, but fails, and she misinterprets the reason for his sudden stiffness.

“Don’t go,” she says jokingly. “You’ve got enough scars already.”

Somehow, compelled by a force he can’t name, Philo heads for the nearest army recruitment post the next morning.

***

Missing in all the propaganda and Philo's newfound determination to make a difference, of course, was the notice that all recruits need a _medical_ inspection to be declared fit before they can enlist. Philo’s certain it’s to avoid people second-guessing their choice because of moments like now, where he’s waiting in line to be the next body to be weighed, measured, and inspected like a hunk of meat. The headmaster’s voice, all those years ago, rings its warning in his ears, but it’s an altogether different voice that calls his name.

“Philo?”

Caught off guard by being recognized, he looks up to see -- Darius, broader than he remembers last seeing him, in a Burgish cadet uniform that’s still starch-crisp. The moment of recognition is all it takes to break the tension he’d been holding, and they reach for each other at the same time, hands clasping arms as both of them break out into surprised grins.

“Where have you--”

“It’s been _years--_ ”

They stop, laugh, and try again, Darius waving Philo to go first. Even talking over each other, Philo doesn’t miss the way Darius’s gaze flicks over him, taking in the changes left by at least four years apart. Time’s been kinder to Darius than it has to Philo, or at least that’s what it feels like, especially when he’s still feeling the throbbing ache in his head singing sweetly about the promise of another tincture to numb himself. Part of him wants to curl away in shame; the other recognizes this as an opportunity. 

“I’m here to enlist,” he says. “I see you beat me to it.”

“I had to beat you at something besides a growth spurt,” Darius smiles, plucking at his uniform with his free hand, searching Philo’s face. Even if _where_ his blood came from wasn’t an issue, what’s in it right now might still be -- Philo doesn’t care to be told he’s looked better, so he speaks, quickly and quietly enough to not be overheard--

“This examination … just how thorough is it, really?”

“As thorough as it needs to be,” Darius answers. But something’s changed in the way he looks at Philo, a consideration, like the silence that used to pass between them as boys planning mischief could be.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

In the end, what Darius can do is put in a word with his commanding officer, who somehow wins Philo an exemption from anyone doing more than clumsily patting their hands over his clothes before shooing him off to the real test, which is scaling nimbly up a near-vertical wall. It should be difficult, since Philo’s not done anything of this sort in years and certainly not with drugs still lingering in his system, but it’s shocking how easy it really is, propelling himself up the rocks with nimble ease. At the top of the rise, Darius clasps his hand and hauls him the rest of the way up.

“Even faster than I remember. Thanks for not making me look bad.”

Evidently, other people think Philo looks pretty good too, because he’s officially signed up for two weeks of training after that, to be shipped out with the 13th Light Dragoons. Surprisingly, none of the nausea or extended agony he’d expected to come with withdrawal comes; he doesn’t get to count his blessings because the daily regimen leaves him queasy at the end of every day.

By the end of two weeks, Philo decides being in the army is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because between the rigid regiment and the exhausting physical activity, there’s no time or energy to spare contemplating limbs, real or otherwise. A curse, because every day reminds Philo how these same men would treat him if they knew any part of him was critch.

So Philo doesn't give them the chance to ever wonder. He learns to get tack on his horse in under five minutes flat. He memorizes the chants of the Burguish army and sings them loud enough to make his teeth rattle in his skull as his feet pound the earth. He keeps his head when they board the ship that will take them across the sea, to Tirnanoc, where all the training they've been put through is put to the test. Philo carries packs that leave both real shoulders and phantom limbs numb, and he keeps climbing -- rocks, trees, walls, anything that the 13th Light Dragoons decide he needs to get up. He even climbs ranks, too, passing Darius (who promises to never let him live it down) sometime in the third year of their campaign.

And a campaign it is, because if there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear, it’s that this war isn’t ending any time soon. Their assignments take them up and down the continent, running supplies or harrying Pact patrols, but it all feels like chipping away at a rock rather than making any decisive strike. Despite the whispers at the camp sites, Philo never makes the mistake of forgetting the Pact is made up of men, just like anyone from the Burgue. Whatever philosophical roots the conflict may have had, it's devolved into nothing but a turf war over resources now, each side unwilling to share in a war that's dragged on and on.

If there's anything to be said for what Philo's gained from such a long time here, besides growing sober, it's that he's finally learned more about the other half of him. The fae are everywhere in Tirnanoc, and they're ... different. They're nothing like the fae of the Burgue, with all the sharp edges and cynicism of having to fight for recognition. They may be exhausted from the war, but they're still connected to their lands, their traditions, not trying to fit into another society.

Unlike the Burgue, the fae here -- they _fly_. Philo still has to fight not to stare every time one takes off. Never do his phantom wings ache harder than when he’s seeing them doing what he’ll never be able to like it’s easy as breathing. But it’s hard to begrudge them the freedom -- between the Pact and the Burgue, waging their war across their home, they have so little else. He watches them fly, and admires their skill, but tells himself he could never be a part of that world.

Then one day, on a trip to a northern mimasery, Philo discovers that he can.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my giftee for giving me the opportunity to write about this show and one of my favorite characters! Your prompts gave a great deal of inspiration, and some ideas for other stories I'd like to spin out down the line. 
> 
> General author’s notes:  
> \- I took the phantom limb thing Philo vaguely alludes to in Kingdoms of the Moon and just ran with it.  
> \- Writing Philo as a scamp at the Light of the Martyr was really fun! If anyone wants to get a good resource for the world of Carnival Row (especially the details of religion for the fae and the Martyrites) look up the Carnival Row RPG from Nerdist/Monte Cook Games. Plenty of fun little details that the show only lightly covers or implies in the background.  
> \- Speaking of details, according to the official wiki, Philo is 37, which means he would have been 30 at the time the war ended. We don’t really know when he signed up -- how any of the Burgue’s ranks and systems operate is largely a black box -- but given his rank is ‘sergeant,’ I wanna say he’s been there a few years but isn’t someone who signed up at 18 either, so I’m envisioning him signing up shortly after.  
> \- Philo may have been raised by a religious order but his enthusiasm in the sack makes me think he had at least a few wild and crazy years before he just embraced the goody two shoes he is.


End file.
